Review - The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, David Lagercrantz

Happily, we encounter here more of the same winning ingredients once again in THE GIRL WHO TAKES AN EYE FOR AN EYE. There is the resourceful and charming journalist Blomkvist, the enigmatic and bitingly intelligent hacker Lisbeth Salander, and another action based plot populated with frightening villains.  The relationship between the two mains is again reading gold (though we see less of it in this outing) and the dynamic between the two remains the strongest aspect of this now legacy series. 

Author David Lagercrantz confidently continues his commissioned task of continuing the Millennium series, two novels in after the death of fellow Swedish author Stieg Larsson. We were all relieved when the previous novel, Lagercrantz’s first Millennium outing, was such a cracker of a read.   Larsson’s spectacularly successful trilogy covered a lot of ground and firmly established Salander as an iconic figure of Scandinavian fiction.   It was no small feat to produce a book which seamlessly carries on the story of Salander and Blomkvist in such a convincing fashion.

THE GIRL WHO TAKES AN EYE FOR AN EYE is constructed on a smaller scale.  The global concerns of the stock market are mentioned again, but not pursued as a major plot driver.  Blomkvist is leading more of a regular life after all his hair raising previous escapades, and there is lot less of Millennium the magazine featured in this outing.  It gets a bit wearying to seeing Salander put on her superhuman cape to solve the world’s problems once again and the novel is not as complex as what we are used to seeing in this series.   The book struggles to keep momentum and is a mish mash of ideas that never quite gel to form a cohesive plot.  The first half of the novel meanders about and Salander’s motivations never ring true as she concerns herself with the problems of others instead of focusing on what’s necessary.

This entry in the series is more of a catch up with what everyone is up to and there is another death of a regular to make sure that Salander considers to suffer, regardless of any improved circumstances.  Not the strongest book but not a terrible one either; read this book for series continuity but the story will not glue you to the pages this time.